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What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

lessannoyingcrm.com

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Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#81

Post by jarrett »

the_bear wrote: post #71
jarrett wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google and Facebook have clear TOS terms forbidding the middle figure and pseudonyms, then I don't see anything wrong with them enforcing those guidelines. (Provided of course they don't ban people who they incorrectly deem to be in violation, which is a whole other can of worms.) Likewise, if you have clear TOS terms regarding prohibited activities like patent trolling, then patent trolls should just refrain from…

This isn't a hypothetical situation. Google was actively banning accounts for using fake names during the early days of Google+. It was in their terms of service, but that didn't matter. People were outraged. The HackerNews community in particular was outraged. Sure they have the right to do it, but that's no way to treat your customers.

True. But I think the problem is that people weren't aware of the rule. I still support a company's right to impose these sorts of conditions. Perhaps when there is a non-common-sense restriction, it should be stated somewhere more prominent than the TOS.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#82

Post by jmathes »

the_bear wrote: post #56
Eliezer wrote: post #52

Scientology certainly operates in violation of the letter of the law - framing people for murder is illegal, I'm pretty sure - they just avoid conviction by bribing local judges and so on. I don't see why you can't just tell the patent troll to go away. Are they being punished for telling you what they do? Yes, but if patent trolls have to operate furtively, not telling anyone what they do, on pain of being denied se…

I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like. This would be a much easier decision if we sold a discrete product. A grocery store or Amazon.com can deny someone service and then they can go shop somewhere else. No big deal. Our users store their most impo…

> I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like.

Using the phrase "primary responsibility" doesn't change the fact that helping unethical people do unethical things puts evil into the world. It sounds like you (and Less Annoying) are subconsciously reasoning with the goal of never being held responsible for evil. That's different from minimizing evil.

A clearer way to make your case would be to say that taking a stand is too expensive (vs not-my-problem.) Maybe the company's resources are better spent assisting ethical customers. Maybe this assistance yields more revenue, further increasing the ability to assist ethical customers. Now you have an exponential growth rate of net good, so you have a big-O notation argument for not policing evil. (... actually, exponential growth rates of small business revenue are really sigmoidal, not exponential, so it will probably be better to switch back to thinking about ethics when you approach market saturation)

I don't feel like I owe sympathy to people who are concerned with culpability rather than with utility, and I doubt you do either.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#83

Post by pessimizer »

jimworm wrote: post #64

If anybody was thinking of dismissing their decision off-hand, consider these: Pharmacists refusing to sell the morning-after pill Refusing to sell computer equipment to HFT firms Banning a child not vaccinated against polio from a swimming pool Cutting off the water supply to your local homeopathy practitioner The world is full of petty tyrants. Tyranny of the majority via the law may not be ideal, but it might be t…

Pharmacists are state licensed, and granted special privileges based on that license; they don't get to be the final say about what they will or won't do.

I don't see a problem with the other three. In fact, the third I actively encourage.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#84

Post by Dylan16807 »

the_bear wrote: post #71
jarrett wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google and Facebook have clear TOS terms forbidding the middle figure and pseudonyms, then I don't see anything wrong with them enforcing those guidelines. (Provided of course they don't ban people who they incorrectly deem to be in violation, which is a whole other can of worms.) Likewise, if you have clear TOS terms regarding prohibited activities like patent trolling, then patent trolls should just refrain from…

This isn't a hypothetical situation. Google was actively banning accounts for using fake names during the early days of Google+. It was in their terms of service, but that didn't matter. People were outraged. The HackerNews community in particular was outraged. Sure they have the right to do it, but that's no way to treat your customers.

What had me outraged was not the terms, but that google wasn't following them. They said to use the name most people knew you by in real life, and proceeded to ban people for doing so. They wouldn't accept extensive documentation of names, only government IDs. (They also accepted blatant photoshops of government IDs.)

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#85

Post by monochromatic »

jeremyarussell wrote: post #72
monochromatic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really... it's not a right that they have. They have the ability to do it, but it's not a right that was ever granted to them, and they're breaking their oath when they do it. I have the ability to sneak into my neighbor's house and steal his things. It's implicitly built into the system where I live next door to him, and he's not always home. But I sure don't have the right to do that.

I'm not sure if your argument is valid. The two seem very different from each other. One is the chance to save someone from prosecution, the other is a chance to take something from another. I almost want to call this a Straw Man argument, you are using an argument that is unrelated but you draw up similarities to make it seem that my argument is wrong. I might be wrong too though.

Yeah, it's kind of a bad example because it's too extreme. But I think the point still holds, and I wasn't able to come up with a better example of something I have the power, but not the right, to do.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#86

Post by lmm »

jmathes wrote: post #82
the_bear wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like. This would be a much easier decision if we sold a discrete product. A grocery store or Amazon.com can deny someone service and then they can go shop somewhere else. No big deal. Our users store their most impo…

> I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like. Using the phrase "primary responsibility" doesn't change the fact that helping unethical people do unethical things puts evil into the world. It sounds like you (and Less Annoying) are subconsciously reasoni…

Utilitarianism 102: having firm written rules, even subobtimal ones, can often have better consequences than evaluating each action on its merits. I've seen it recommended on this very site to avoid any hosting provider with a "morality clause" in their T&Cs. A service that will host "any legal content", while it will aid a certain proportion of unethical actions, ultimately contributes more benefit to society than one that hosts "any legal content, except that we morally object to".

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#87

Post by gdacuna »

the_bear wrote: post #56
Eliezer wrote: post #52

Scientology certainly operates in violation of the letter of the law - framing people for murder is illegal, I'm pretty sure - they just avoid conviction by bribing local judges and so on. I don't see why you can't just tell the patent troll to go away. Are they being punished for telling you what they do? Yes, but if patent trolls have to operate furtively, not telling anyone what they do, on pain of being denied se…

I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like. This would be a much easier decision if we sold a discrete product. A grocery store or Amazon.com can deny someone service and then they can go shop somewhere else. No big deal. Our users store their most impo…

As a software company, I would be wary of doing anything, whether legal or otherwise, to support a software patent troll. Having access to your software is clearly in the interest of your real users, and this access is threatened by the practice of patent trolling.

I understand your reluctance, of course, but a company whose business model that abuses the legal system at the expense of companies that produce software seems like a reasonable thing for a software company to avoid dealings with. How can your users trust you if they think they might wake up one day and your product is gone because of spurious patent litigation?

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#88

Post by CamperBob2 »

mojowo11 wrote: post #10
motters wrote: post #6

If you're running a software business then it's probably not a great idea to actively assist people who are trying to damage the software business with trolling behavior. It would be self-defeating. It's a slightly different situation when dealing with other people whose views or activities you might not entirely concur with. In most cases their activities won't be directly harming your industry.

This is pretty much what we struggled with -- at one point, we thought about how dumb we would feel if we did everything we could to streamline the guy's workflow and then received one of his letters demanding payment. That's another interesting place to draw the line, though -- self-preservation, or at least protection of your own industry. It's pretty compelling, although it still feels a bit odd to be protective o…

That's another interesting place to draw the line, though -- self-preservation, or at least protection of your own industry.

Arguably this could be justified the same way you would justify refusing to support drug dealers, even though you disagree with the War on Some Drugs. Your only justification for turning down such business (as I understand it) is that you can't accept the risk of having the whole company shut down by law enforcement. Not many people would take you to task for that reasoning, I suspect, and it would be easy to dismiss those who do.

It's easy to argue that software patents carry the same existential threat as law enforcement would. At first blush it seems reasonable to write this into your TOS: I agree that I will not assert any patent claims as a non-practicing entity. I agree that my account with lessannoyingcrm.com will be terminated without recourse if I assert any such claims in a court of law, or threaten to do so.

The problem is, you've only narrowed your ethical dilemma -- you haven't eliminated it. What if the patent troll in question was instead offering to buy your company for 100x revenue? What if the patent troll in question was (e.g.) Google or Apple? Would you have the fortitude to tell them to pound sand then? Google may be a good example, in fact, because they've probably already found it necessary (or soon will) to threaten other companies like Microsoft and Oracle with patents that they don't practice, but have purchased for defensive purposes.

If you had turned down the patent troll's business, you would indeed have found yourself in an even murkier ethical swamp, so in that sense you did the right thing. Out of all of the entrepreneurs I've known in a long career spent in and around small companies, I only know one founder with the personal fortitude to tell a patent troll to get bent. I don't expect to meet any others, because I'm not sure you can build a large, successful company around strong personal convictions in the general case.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#89

Post by matthewowen »

jeremyarussell wrote: post #72
monochromatic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really... it's not a right that they have. They have the ability to do it, but it's not a right that was ever granted to them, and they're breaking their oath when they do it. I have the ability to sneak into my neighbor's house and steal his things. It's implicitly built into the system where I live next door to him, and he's not always home. But I sure don't have the right to do that.

I'm not sure if your argument is valid. The two seem very different from each other. One is the chance to save someone from prosecution, the other is a chance to take something from another. I almost want to call this a Straw Man argument, you are using an argument that is unrelated but you draw up similarities to make it seem that my argument is wrong. I might be wrong too though.

Well, it might be that the guy you save from prosecution is the same one that just broke into their next door neighbour's house. And hey, the neighbour might have thought it was his right, and you might agree. But that isn't the point.

The actual point is that rights and laws are supposed to be generated by consensus. Doing something just because you're able to isn't generating by consensus - it's happening because a sufficient number of jurors in a case decided they disagreed with something.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#90

Post by CamperBob2 »

pessimizer wrote: post #83
jimworm wrote: post #64

If anybody was thinking of dismissing their decision off-hand, consider these: Pharmacists refusing to sell the morning-after pill Refusing to sell computer equipment to HFT firms Banning a child not vaccinated against polio from a swimming pool Cutting off the water supply to your local homeopathy practitioner The world is full of petty tyrants. Tyranny of the majority via the law may not be ideal, but it might be t…

Pharmacists are state licensed, and granted special privileges based on that license; they don't get to be the final say about what they will or won't do. I don't see a problem with the other three. In fact, the third I actively encourage.

Pharmacists are state licensed, and granted special privileges based on that license; they don't get to be the final say about what they will or won't do.

You would think so, but remember that in the US, religion is the third rail of politics. Play the Jeebus card, and you can dodge almost all of the other rules and regulations in polite society. (See http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Judge-Washington-stat... ).

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